Moon & Saturn Team Up at Dawn on Super Bowl Sunday

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Super Bowl Sunday will kick off bright and early with a celestial
team-up between the last quarter moon and the ringed wonder of
the solar system, the planet Saturn.

To see the planet-moon pairing, which astronomers call a
conjunction, start looking low toward the east-southeast horizon
shortly after 12:30 a.m. (your local time) on Feb. 3. Weather
permitting, soon after
the moon emerges from beyond the horizon, you'll notice a
bright non-twinkling yellow-white "star" shining sedately above
and to its left.

If you have any obstructions such as buildings or trees in that
direction you might have to wait awhile as the celestial pair
slowly climbs higher in the sky.

They will be at their highest, appearing roughly one-third of the
way from the horizon to the point directly overhead (the zenith)
at around 5:30 a.m. your local time. By that time, Saturn will
appear about 4 degrees directly above the moon. Your clenched
fist held at arm's length measures about 10 degrees, so the moon
and Saturn will be separated by roughly less than half a fist.

For the past two years, Saturn had been keeping close company in
the night sky with the bluish first magnitude star Spica in
Virgo, but now Saturn has left Spica far behind. You'll see it
about 18 degrees to Saturn's right.

And if you look about 5 degrees below and to Saturn's left you
may note the star with the tongue-twisting name of Zubenelgenubi
(pronounced "zoo-BEN-el-je-NEW-bee") in the constellation of
Libra, the Scales. If you have binoculars, train them on
Zubenelgenubi and it will reveal itself to be a wide double-star.

You'll need more than binoculars, however to bring out the famous
rings of Saturn. A
telescope magnifying at least 30-power will reveal the famous
rings, now tilted more than 19-degrees to our line of sight.
Saturn is currently 901 million miles (1.45 billion kilometers)
from Earth.

On the other hand, the moon is more than 3,900 times closer to
Earth than Saturn is, and also moves rapidly to the east relative
to Saturn. That's why as Saturn begins to fade from view in
Sunday's brightening dawn twilight about a half hour before
sunrise, the moon will have moved on past Saturn; the planet now
appearing above and to the moon's right.

Editor's note: If you snap an amazing photo
of the moon and Saturn, or any other night sky object,
that you'd like to share for a possible story or image
gallery, send photos, comments and your name and location to
managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New
York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New
York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera
meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York.